Project Catalogs Historic Trees

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- An effort to catalog 100-year-old trees that provided temporary shelter for pioneers when Oklahoma became a state is still putting down roots a year after the state's centennial celebration.

Tulsa has the Hanging Tree, where legend says cattle rustlers hung from ropes on its spreading limbs. The Whipping Tree in Wewoka was a disciplinary site for the Seminole Tribe.

Garfield County is known for a wedding tree, where folks traveled across a county line to marry legally.

Landowners and nature lovers across the state nominated about 500 specific trees for the Centennial Witness Tree Project.

The Oklahoma Forestry Services and the Tree Bank Foundation joined in 2007 to launch the centennial project. They wanted to find and register trees that were growing in 1907, when Oklahoma became the nation's 46th state.